A smart revolution: World Congress in Asia

by Georgina Smith | Jan 13, 2016

If you’re on a diet in 2016, restricting your carb intake might be on your list of New Year’s resolutions. But around the world, demand is on the rise for starch and other forms of carbohydrate, as incomes rise and consumer preferences change. It might seem strange...

Harvesting Results from the International Year of Soils

by Ruben G. Echeverría | Dec 17, 2015

As 2015 draws to a close, so does the International Year of Soils. Research on soils is a critical pillar of CIAT’s work, as Center staff demonstrated throughout the year, in a global campaign that put soils at the forefront of issues ranging from food security and...

Bovine Intervention: Colombia prepares to give unsustainable cattle production the hoof

by Neil Palmer | Dec 15, 2015

An ambitious proposal from the Colombian government to make cattle production more sustainable could save over a billion tonnes in greenhouse gas emissions, while protecting forests, regenerating land and boosting farmer incomes. If funded, the work will contribute to...

Smart beans help farmers cope with global warming – CIAT on Deutsche Welle

by Stephanie Malyon | Dec 10, 2015

The eyes of the world are on Paris as leaders from 195 countries continue to hammer out a global agreement on how to address climate change, a threat that is expected to have huge impact on the ability of some communities to grow food. Take beans, for example. Beans...

What’s in your noodle soup?

by Georgina Smith | Dec 9, 2015

You may never have heard of it before. A globetrotting crop by all accounts, it’s thought to have been introduced into Southeast Asia in the Philippines from Mexico in the 19th Century. As our diet becomes ever more complex, cassava – or tapioca – a...

Not so dirt cheap

by Georgina Smith | Dec 7, 2015

The coffee on your desk might never have arrived this morning. Deforestation rates in Ethiopia – one of the world’s top coffee exporters – are so high, records show, that forest is slashed from 40 to less than 3 percent of the country. As well as surviving...